Schools Cup: RBAI 22 RSA 26 Semi Final

—

by

John McMurtry

We are currently carrying out a necessary behind-the-scenes upgrade to how images are stored and delivered on The Front Row Union Sports. With over 770,000 images on the site, we are moving our entire image library to a dedicated cloud storage service. This means images will load faster for you, regardless of where you are in the world, and the site will be more reliable overall.

As we are working on three separate versions of images during the offload process, the site cache sometimes struggles to keep up with which version to display and occasionally post grid images or complete galleries may fail to appear. This is a temporary side effect of the migration process — the image exists and is safe, it is simply in the process of being moved to its new home and identified as being there. A refresh of the page will usually bring them back, however, if it does not please contact john@thefrontrowunion.com stating clearly the post address and we will restore it as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and appreciate your patience.

We expect the bulk of the image migration to be completed by the end of June 2026, with a fully upgraded version of the site ready to launch in August 2026. Once that work is done, the site will be noticeably faster, images will load more reliably, and you will not see any further disruption of this kind. Thank you for your continued support of The Front Row Union Sports.

Royal Belfast Academical Institution 22 Royal School Armagh 26

Wednesday afternoon’s semi final was a much more thrilling affair with Royal School Armagh holding on to secure a deserved 22 – 26 win in a raucous Ravenhill.

The Armagh team started the match in some style and raced to a 14 – 0 win thanks to early tries from and captain , both converted by .

A shocked RBAI, who were pushing for a 100% win season, responded with a 26th minute penalty from before scrum half Niall Armstrong nipped over, close to half time, for try off the back of a scrum. McIlveen added the conversion to take the score to 10 – 14 in Armagh’s favour at the break.

Armagh extended their lead at the start of the second half with Ryan O’Neill crossing after a period of sustained pressure. Thompson converted to rattle the scoreboard along to 10 – 21.

RBAI came storming back with an unconverted try from  to take the score to 15 – 21 but Armagh once again opened up a two score gap when found the line to give Armagh a 15 – 26 lead with 15 minutes remaining.

crossed and McIlveen converted, with 5 minutes left, to set up a barnstorming finish from the Belfast side but the Orchard County boys held on to record a 22 – 26 win in this thrilling encounter.

RBAI: Bradley McNamara, Jamie Mullan, Robin McIlveen, Angus Adair, Jude Postlethwaite, David Lyttle, Niall Armstrong; Ethan Sloan, Connor McCormick, Jared Wait, Daniel Eakin, Tim Lyons, AJ Hussell, Jack Magee, David McCann (C). Replacements: Rory Adair, Robert Curry, Stuart McAuley, Tom Lavery, Alexander Weir, Marco Manso, Kyle McComiskey, James Heyburn.

RS Armagh: Michael Campbell, Oliver Webb, Zac Thompson, Matthew Reaney, Nicholas Jennings, Romain Morrow, Charlie Worth; Jack Chapman, Jack Treanor (C), Jonny Agnew, Ryan Finlay, Samuel King, Aaron Woods, Graham Crawford, Ryan O’Neill. Replacements: Sam Rainey, Adam Edgar, Archie McAlpine, Jude Roberts, Josh King, Alex Johnston, Callum Whiteside, Peter Taylor.

GALLERY BELOW

Pictures below from Bob Given Photography

IF in Doubt, sit them out

Download the UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport Here

Corrections

Drop us a note below if there are any corrections required in this article.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Rugby Latest